


Starving on Scraps of Kindness

by penguistifical



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Orgasm Delay/Denial, not entirely human Jaskier, taking liberties with the video game lore always
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:19:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22490191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penguistifical/pseuds/penguistifical
Summary: "It seems obvious in retrospect, but Geralt didn’t realize Jaskier’s true nature until the two of them encountered a succubus."
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 55
Kudos: 2448





	Starving on Scraps of Kindness

**Author's Note:**

> cw: this has a few lines that, though not explicit, do have a body dysphoria vibe.

It seems obvious in retrospect, but Geralt didn’t realize Jaskier’s true nature until the two of them encountered a succubus.  
  
They’d settled into a routine, the witcher and the bard, journeying as sellsword and singer. They’d travel, take coin for their services, and travel again. 

Often the witcher’s reputation would precede him, and the Butcher of Blaviken would accept a village’s cold reception with stoic silence. 

Sometimes Jaskier’s songs would arrive to a place before the bard did, and he was always thrilled when that happened, exchanging friendly overtures with raucous crowds. 

Neither man was instantly recognized in the town where they'd just arrived, but nor were they met with suspicion. It’s a calm and content place with few complaints.

One of those rare few problems is the rumor of a horned creature that has been glimpsed from time to time in the edges of the woods that skirt the town. Nobody has been hurt, but Geralt is offered a modest purse from the town council to investigate. 

Coin and crowds have been good to the pair lately, they easily have enough to pay for a room at one of the inns.

They’re doing comfortably enough at the moment that they actually have enough for two rooms, but it’s become a habit to get the one.

Geralt had thought, when the two had started traveling together, that the bard was trying for a physical relationship. He wasn’t averse, but Jaskier, despite a lot of flirting and no respect for the witcher’s personal space, made no move to act on any suggestions, and so Geralt backed off.

They’re still fine rooming together, mostly because they’re never usually wanting the room at the same time.

It’s not because they spend no time with each other - Jaskier frequently insists on coming along on near deadly jaunts - but Geralt’s often out at twilight hours, and Jaskier has a habit of finding other beds.

Once their room at the inn is secured, Geralt heads out in the early evening to see if he can find any signs or traces of this horned beast, anything that will help him begin readying himself for the hunt to come.  
  
He finds her immediately.

The succubus has settled into an abandoned hut at the outskirts of the town. This is typical of her kind. They like to be close to humans, but on their own terms. 

She’s outside the dilapidated hut that she’s turned into a home, sunning herself comfortably, reclining on a patch of grass as if it’s a luxurious couch. There’s a young woman behind her, twining small flowers into her horns and hair, and the two are laughing together.

The succubus catches sight of Geralt as he approaches, and looks him over with a pleased lazy smile that promptly vanishes the moment she catches sight of Jaskier behind him.

There’s plenty of people in the world not happy to see the bard, and Geralt entertains for a moment the thought that this succubus is somehow an old acquaintance of Jaskier’s. But the succubus, after glancing at the bard, affects not to notice him at all.

She straightens up, brushing wildflowers from her shoulders, the previous peace thoroughly disturbed. “I’ve done no wrong.” she calls to the witcher, flatly.

“Make yourself more known to the village.” Geralt answers. “Some of them are worried about what might be in their woods.”

She laughs, though the sound has none of the warmth of the laughter she was exchanging earlier with the woman who now stands defensively behind her. 

Succubi and incubi are sturdy fighters, and Geralt doesn’t want to engage with her if he doesn’t have to, not with a bystander behind the succubus and Jaskier behind him. They’re usually physical brawlers, though this close to her, he can taste in the air the harsh metallic scent of the fire magic her kind are known to naturally channel.  
  
“They’ve been seeking me out, witcher. I am already “known” to the ones that wanted to know me.” 

“It would be for your safety, as well as theirs." Geralt responds. "Especially if you’re intending to stay here.”

“I may.” She finally looks back to Jaskier, and her lip curls in disgust. “I’m not intending to leave any kind of permanent mark.”

With that, she tosses her hair and head, dismissing them from her home. “Leave, then.”

She extends a hand to her current human lover and the two of them both go into the hut.

Beside him, Jaskier sighs. It’s not the sigh Geralt was expecting, the feigned disappointment of a man who had been hoping to ogle a succubus for a while longer, but something stuttered, a bit broken, and Geralt turns in surprise.

Jaskier’s hand is slightly outstretched as if he can’t stop himself from reaching out to where the succubus was, and he looks utterly forlorn.

He smells slightly of the tears pricking the corners of his eyes, but also faintly, so faintly of sparks and hot iron. 

“Jaskier,” Geralt says, cautiously.

“Well. Never met one of those before.” Jaskier says, too brightly, like one of his own lute strings wound too taut, sure to snap if played.

Succubi and incubi feed on carnal energy and spirit, sipping lustful vitality as if savoring a fine wine. Their sexual appetites and invitations are common knowledge. 

However, despite their physical forms, they share little with humans, and anyone who has studied lore knows that creatures of fire cannot stand beings that are part human and part demon.

Geralt suspects it may have to do with the older practice of binding and entrapping incubi and succubi. For them, seeing a hybrid may be a sign of hazardous magic, as normally their couplings do not make children. It does make sense that they’d avoid a part-demon, though it’s rather unfair to the hybrid.

On the other hand, succubi and incubi are infamously unable to comprehend most human emotions, preferring the rawer forms of atavistic lust that sustain them. Perhaps it’s much kinder, in their own way, for demons to distance themselves from someone that would ask them for a love they cannot give.

But, Jaskier is shaken and still, and outside the home of a succubus isn’t the place to have a conversation about his bloodline. Besides, she’s no doubt waiting for them to leave, and he doesn’t want to linger and upset Jaskier further if she resorts to physically driving them off.  
  


* * *

Jaskier rouses a bit as they approach the inn, and by the time they’ve returned to their room, he’s left his state of quiet distress and settled comfortably into the beginnings of a loud frustrated fit.

The bard slams their door open, and tosses his pack to the floor with an unnecessary clatter.

“I’m not feeling up to working a room tonight. That was a rubbish adventure, really.” Jaskier stares at nothing, clenching and unclenching his fists. “You go have a drink or two.”

When Geralt doesn’t answer, or leave the room, Jaskier snaps his head to him angrily. “Geralt, I need a little space right now. This space, empty, for preference.”

“Jaskier,” Geralt begins, and hesitates. He wants Jaskier to explain what they both already know. It’ll be easier if it comes from his own lips, rather than Geralt accusing him.

But Jaskier has gone tight-lipped in anger, and only watches, daring him to continue.

“I’m sorry you won’t have anything to sing about,” Geralt says slowly, circling the point. “But not all succubi and incubi need to be slain. They’re complicated creatures with their own wants and personalities. I don’t think the lady we met this evening did anything warranting her own death. Some are good, some are bad, like any human.”

Jaskier had been looking slightly mollified, but the moment Geralt ends in “like any human,” his hackles immediately reraise, and he stomps over to Geralt.

“Oh, like any human? How many humans do you know that have horns, Geralt?” The bard gestures above his head for emphasis, curling his fingers in the empty space above his hair, before continuing spitting vitriol. “Although I suppose there might be a few more who do, once that bitch settles in and starts making half-breeds.”

“Their kind aren’t supposed to have children that way. They almost never do.”

“Well, why _do_ they sometimes?” Jaskier asks, and his voice breaks slightly.

“Certain magics, usually involved in entrapping a demon to service, can result in a child. I have heard that it is also possible for a child to have a succubi or incubi parent if their other parent was already not fully human. I’ve seen and met several people like that."

He wouldn’t give Jaskier anything but honesty, not when the bard is so clearly hanging on his every word, starving for information about what he might be. It’s true that in his travels he’s seen plenty of people who aren’t fully human. There’s always somebody who doesn’t want to put their hood down in a crowded marketplace for fear of showing finely tipped ears. Everyone knows the stigma of being partially elven. He’s seen- and heard- some with beautiful voices who can’t seem to resist dipping their hands into every stream they pass.

He once saw a young acolyte looking desperately into the wind, smelling vaguely of feathers, but running their hand over their too-human shoulder blades.

Some pairings result in greater sadness than others, some partially-human bloodlines have the potential for much more cruelty than others.

“What did you do, witcher, with these half-humans that you met?” Jaskier says, after a moment’s consideration.

“Why should I have done anything?”

“You kill monsters.” Jaskier spits out the phrase as if the words are distasteful in his mouth.

“So I do. None of them were.”

Jaskier turns away from him and sags back onto the bed in the room. The hot anger’s mostly bled out of him, but the bard’s still holding onto some frustration, and still smells a bit like an abandoned blacksmith’s forge.

“What if….” Jaskier haltingly begins. “What if they just weren’t any good at it? Being monsters, I mean.”

Geralt waits for Jaskier to continue, knowing from experience that he’ll usually respond to a silent audience, especially if it consists of a single person.

“I knew my parents. I’m not...Jaskier’s the name I chose as a bard, once I finished some of my training. I named myself Jaskier of no place, because a bard wanders. I had a name and a home before this. My parents were human.”

Geralt goes to sit beside him on the bed. “At least one wasn’t, not entirely.”

“Did you know? I mean, when you met me?”

“You approached me, if memory serves. But no, I didn’t know.”

It does make sense, though. Geralt has no judgement for any person seeking pleasure, but Jaskier offering sweet words and warm nights from village to village is very in keeping with an incubus’s behavior, albeit a much softer version. Rather than waiting for humans to approach him for a night of lust, Jaskier actively courts and seeks out the surprisingly passionate. There’s even something in the way that the bard performs for a crowd, working the energies of his listeners and sipping on the pleasure of his audience, that's a bit incubus-like. Geralt had thought before that Jaskier sometimes looked a bit drunk after being cheered for a performance. Maybe he actually had been receiving something from their applause.

The bard finally puts the truth that they haven’t been saying to words.

“I know I’m part incubus, but...can I charm people?”

Geralt knows what he’s actually asking. “No. Anyone who has gone with you has been entirely willing. That tale of magical seduction is only a tale. Succubi and incubi may feed on energies, but their magic is of fire. If the one we just met had been a problem, I’d probably have had a rough time fighting her. They’re strong and resilient.”

Actually, considering how easily Jaskier seems to get back up after being knocked down, maybe he’s inherited a bit of that hard-headedness despite having no trace of horns.

The thought makes him smile slightly, and Jaskier punches him in the shoulder, hard.

“Don’t you laugh at me, witcher.”

He draws back his fist again, and Geralt catches it, squeezing in warning.

“When were you going to say something, Jaskier? Never?”  
  
“What does it matter? Things were fine when you didn’t know, it wasn’t hurting you.”

Geralt thinks of the first time they met, how excited Jaskier had been to realize who he was, and, maybe, what he knew. 

“Did you ask to accompany me in the hopes that you’d run into another incubus and speak to them? Were you using me?”

“No!”

“You were worried you were somehow using your abilities to charm people. Did you think I’d be safe because witchers have no emotions?”

Jaskier lets go of the last of his anger, folding back in on himself, looking small.

“If I wasn’t a...even if I were only, I mean, all human.” Jaskier shakes his head in frustration at not having the words he needs to describe himself. “If I were all human I’d know you still have emotions, Geralt.”

Geralt releases Jaskier’s fist, but takes the hand in his own, slowly rubbing his thumb over Jaskier’s knuckles as he waits for the bard to collect himself.

“I’d know that, at least. But I don’t...I don’t know what I’m doing.” Jaskier is looking pointedly away, down at the ground. “Even when sleeping with someone is good, it’s bad after sometimes, and I don’t know why. I don’t have anybody to ask how to be an incubus, if I even felt safe asking.”

The bard touches his chest, absently, subconsciously acknowledging a void. “I need something, but I don’t know what it is.”

Jaskier finally looks Geralt in the eyes, forlorn, wanting. “I’m so hungry.”

Geralt considers the closeness that never extended beyond flirting and teasing.  
  
“I thought you didn’t want a physical relationship.”

“Gods, have you seen yourself? Of course I did. But, well...it didn’t feel right not to tell you.”

“Do you usually tell the people you sleep with that you’re part incubus?”

Jaskier snorts. “Fuck no. But, I wouldn’t...it wouldn’t have felt right, to keep it from you. Besides, whoever I spend a night with in one village, I won’t see again for months, ever. I want to stay with you.”

Jaskier looks surprised at what he’s accidentally said so openly. “I mean, if you’ll have me with you, now that you know.”

Geralt puts a hand under Jaskier’s chin, forcing him to look up at him. “I said it doesn’t matter to me what someone is as long as their intentions are good. Weren’t you listening?”

“I do, sometimes.”  
  
“Stay with me, Jaskier.” Geralt says, rubbing his fingers lightly over Jaskier’s cheek, and is surprised by the sudden flush of heat that he feels under his palm. He can nearly taste the biting tang of iron in the air that Jaskier’s emanating.

“Geralt, I _want_....I don’t know what to do.” Jaskier nearly wails, leaning into his hand.

Geralt takes the bard into his arms, leaning them both back against the headboard of the bed so that Jaskier is sitting in his lap.

“Relax, relax,” he murmurs into Jaskier’s ear. He runs his hands down the bard’s shoulders, holding him. The bard pushes his face into the hollow of Geralt’s throat, breathing deep.

Jaskier's dressed in his usual performing finery from having previously planned to play after they went out scouting. Geralt opens the colorful doublet, and hesitates before reaching under the chemise. 

“Can I?” he asks, hand toying with the hem of Jaskier’s undershirt before sliding down, rubbing the bard’s hips over the fabric of his pants.

“Yes, come _on._ ” Jaskier mutters into Geralt’s neck, and Geralt laughs at his impatience before reaching under the chemise to rest a warm hand on the bard’s stomach.

“Relax,” he says again, slowly exploring Jaskier’s chest.

“I have never felt less relaxed in my fucking life.” Jaskier says flatly, but Geralt can feel him smiling. 

He can also smell Jaskier’s arousal and feel his heartbeat hammering underneath his hand.  
Having him curled up against his chest like this feels shockingly intimate, not anything like the quick fling he’d thought the bard was angling for.

“Geralt?”

“Hm?”

“You’re not doing this just because I said I was, well, hungry, right?” 

“I don’t want you to be starving for energy, no, but if you’re asking if I’m going to fuck you as some kind of considerate favor, we’re going to stop so that I make sure you haven’t injured your skull to ask something like that.”

Jaskier huffs in annoyance, and so Geralt kisses the top of his head and says “I want you.”  
  
He is promptly rewarded by another flush of heat as Jaskier’s incubus nature tries to surface.

“We’ll figure out what you need, Jaskier,” he says, helping the bard out of his doublet.

“It’s supposed to be me doing that, I think.”

“What?”

“Undressing you, and telling you what you need, and I don’t know what all.”  
  
“Well, if you don’t know what two people d-”

“Oh, shut up.” Jaskier says, but fondly, shucking off his chemise and pressing himself back on top of Geralt. “And I’ll have you know, it’s been more than “two people” a few times. But, if I’m...you know, part incubus,” he says, testing out the phrase, saying it more gently than before. “I should just be doing more of the seducing, I think.”

Jaskier is adorably tongue-tied sometimes. It’s a bit odd for a bard, but suits Jaskier.

“Whatever you’d like.” Geralt says, and laughs when Jaskier scowls.

“See! That’s supposed to be my line, Geralt.”  
  
Jaskier lets out a distinctly unmusical squawk as Geralt puts his hands under the bard’s ass and lifts him so that he’s straddling one of Geralt’s thighs.  
  
“You tell me then,” Geralt says, and nearly adds ‘incubus’ to the end of it, but decides he’ll leave that for Jaskier to call himself when he wants to do so.  
  
“Well….do whatever you’d like.” Jaskier says, making Geralt laugh again at how the bard has turned the phrase around.

“Incubi and succubi feed on sexual energies,” Geralt begins.

“Gods, well, if it turns out what you’d like is to give me a lecture on monsters, I may need to be a little more clear in what I’m asking for.” Jaskier snarks, and yelps when Geralt gives his nipple a sharp tweak.

“...And so, Jaskier, I think if you let me enjoy myself by pleasing you, you might be able to act on instinct?”

Jaskier leans in close and kisses his cheek. Geralt can feel the bard’s eyelashes brushing up against him.

“It’s worth a try.”

Geralt kisses him, gently, testing. It’s something he could pass ages doing, and Jaskier hums, pleased, against him. He thinks about how Jaskier’s arousal has spiked, and when.

“Tell me if this isn’t okay?” he asks Jaskier, who nods expectantly.

Geralt bites the bard’s lower lip, gently sucking it into his mouth and working it over with his teeth as he runs his hands up Jaskier’s back to rub rough circles into his shoulders, pressing him in close. 

Jaskier starts to squirm a bit in his lap, and so he threads a hand through the bard’s hair and grips, holding him in place as the kiss turns from something sweet to something filthy. He’s essentially fucking Jaskier’s mouth with his tongue, muffling the bard’s moans with his own mouth as Jaskier rubs himself along Geralt’s thigh between his legs.

When he pulls away to breathe he sees the bard is flushed, eyes closed, still shifting back and forth, riding Geralt’s leg.

“Geralt, I want to be wearing less clothing. And for you to take off any of yours.”

“Soon.” Geralt says, admiring how Jaskier’s lips look puffed and red from soft bites. It reminds him a bit of the time Jaskier showed him court makeup.

But he takes his time, kissing the bard's mouth bruised, carefully pulling him forward by his hair in slow tugs that make Jaskier gasp into the kiss and rock into him.

“Who would have thought that witchers were like this. Or is it just you?” Jaskier says, panting, frustrated. “It’ll make for a nice ballad, at least. ‘Tease’ rhymes with such an awful lot.”

“You said I could do whatever I liked.” Geralt replies, running his hands through Jaskier’s hair, petting the top of his head to contrast any fading sting from pulling earlier. “And what I would like is for you to be desperate for me.”

Jaskier lets out a sound that’s nearly a growl as Geralt palms his cock through the front of his pants. The witcher relents, leaving to undress, hearing the sounds of Jaskier kick off his own pants from the bed.

When Geralt returns, he rolls them both so that their on their sides, Jaskier’s back pressed against his chest. If the bard had any lingering thoughts about Geralt doing this as some kind of lukewarm favor, they’re hopefully banished by the feeling of Geralt’s cock pressed up against him.

“Don’t touch your prick until I say you can.” Geralt tells him, and begins slowly stroking him. He keeps his touches light, unsatisfying, frequently leaving Jaskier’s cock to run his hands up and down his thighs, stopping to massage Jaskier’s ass.  
Jaskier is shaking in his grip, running his hands over his own arms and chest, desperate to touch, unable to hold still.

“You’re doing so well,” Geralt tells him. Jaskier’s breath stutters at Geralt’s warm voice in his ear, and Geralt squeezes the base of the bard’s cock, hard. Jaskier whines, rust on his breath, waves of incubus heat pulsing out from his whole body.

“You are awful,” Jaskier pants in response, grinding back against him.

“Don’t come either until I say,” Geralt says, and begins slowly stroking him again, running his thumb over the head of Jaskier’s cock, rubbing his shaft that’s slick with precum. “You can do this for a little while longer.”

“Geralt, _please_ , fucking touch me.” Jaskier begs, but makes no move to reach for himself.

“You’re being so good for me, sweetheart.” Geralt tells him and feels the man he’s holding suddenly relax entirely back against him and....become subtly different.  
  
Jaskier looks unchanged, from Geralt’s view anyway, but the air smells and tastes of a furnace’s heat and molten iron, and the bard is gasping in the air as if he’s taking deep draughts of water after running for his life.  
  
“You look so good like this,” Geralt whispers, taking Jaskier’s cock in hand and pumping slowly. “I love the sounds you make, whether it’s your singing, or your moans.” Jaskier groans, low, desperate.  
  
A human cannot feed on sexual energies or channel carnal fire, and an incubus cannot comprehend complex mortal emotions. Whatever combination produced Jaskier has resulted in a creature that craves and feeds on both sexual and emotional energy. 

Geralt will think on this later, when his head isn’t clouded by lust, what it means that Jaskier hadn’t been able to be satisfied or reach this state before with someone other than him.

“I don’t know what I’d do without you, Jaskier, my own precious bard,” he whispers, and Jaskier gasps and arches in his grip.  
  
“Do you want to come now?” Geralt asks.

“I...I don’t know.” Jaskier groans, tilting his head back. “It f-feels so fucking good.”

Jaskier’s helpless, caught between the satisfaction of Geralt’s lust and adoration that he’s feeding on against his own physical desperation to orgasm.

Geralt keeps him on edge a bit longer, caught in the middle of completion and delicious torment.

When Geralt reaches down between them to touch himself, Jaskier abruptly flips himself over so that they’re face to face.  
  
“Please, _please_ , Geralt.”

Geralt takes them both in hand, and Jaskier comes almost immediately, spilling himself against their stomachs. Geralt rocks into his fist and against Jaskier’s cock, and comes soon after.

Geralt feels relaxed, sated, lingering in the post-orgasm high, before he realizes Jaskier feels oddly cool to the touch.

He remembers something the bard had said before, _“It’s bad after sometimes, and I don’t know why.”_

After spending time with an incubus, he’d expect to be feeling slightly wearied, if not drained and dizzy. He hadn’t thought to be worried that Jaskier might accidentally hurt him in his inexperience. But, he feels only slightly tired.

Geralt’s not unfamiliar with shifts in high emotional states that sometimes follow after lovemaking, but this is something more. Jaskier has apparently fed on his own energies.  
  
He’d love to put the bard into a warm bath, but he doesn’t want to leave him to go request that a tub be filled. It’d also be both obvious and awkward to leave the room at the moment, smelling thoroughly of sex.

So, instead he gathers up the blankets that they’ve kicked to the bottom of the bed and bundles Jaskier up, and then cuddles the bard under himself, laying almost entirely on top of him.

“Feeling better, sweetheart?” Geralt asks, carding a hand through Jaskier’s sweat-damp hair, kissing the back of his neck.

Jaskier shifts a little underneath him, and murmurs, “...heavy.” but when Geralt braces himself up on an arm, Jaskier hastily adds “Stay.” and noses out of the blankets muzzily to press a kiss to Geralt’s shoulder.

“Cambion,” Geralt says thoughtfully. “I’ve heard it as a name for those who are part incubus.”

Jaskier mumbles “It’s a good name.” and slowly his shivers stop.

Geralt eases them both into a more comfortable pose, though still holding Jaskier tightly.

The metallic scent has almost entirely faded. Jaskier’s head is pillowed on his chest, and his breathing evens out as the bard falls asleep, utterly spent, and, for once, entirely satisfied.

If Geralt can catch a private moment in the next few days, he’ll go back out to the succubus and try to speak with her, see if there’s anything he can learn that will help Jaskier with who he is.

For now, he adjusts his warm armful of bard, and lets Jaskier’s breathing lull him to sleep as well.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> this had a first draft that was way too sad, so I banished it for something a little sweeter because  
> I am s o f t 
> 
> also thanks everybody who leaves kudos and comments, you are all great and I appreciate it a lot  
> thank you for reading!


End file.
